Posts by Grammy Mo

          Over the weekend, I attended our online Advanced Toastmasters Club. It is not yet chartered so we are working to become a chartered club. Toastmasters International requires at least twenty members to charter a new club. We just need three more. But that is not what I want to write about. I was reminded of all we learn about language in toastmasters. We have a role called grammarian and another role called “ ah” counter. These two roles teach us a lot about habits that we have adopted in our day to day language. For…

                    With Valentines Day arriving this week, I am reminded of one of the benefits of toastmasters. In the three clubs I belong to, we like to have “ themed” meetings. It helps to organize our meeting around a theme. The toastmaster, who looks after the agenda, will do a little introduction about the theme, maybe a bit of history or an anecdotal story about the theme. We generally will have a “ word of the day” that is associated with the theme and it is everyone’s responsibility to use the…

One of the first speaking projects that you are asked to do in Toastmasters is to speak about yourself. It is the easiest subject ever. You are the expert on your own life. This speech is designed to help you learn a few basics about speaking but more importantly to introduce yourself to the club. When you do this speech you have 4-6 minutes to speak about you! For some that seems like an eternity. For others, it seems like so little time. How do I fit a life-time into 4-6 minutes. I remember my first speech. Since I was…

As I started my speaking career, I was a nervous wreck! I was very shy and introverted but when I applied for a new job, one component was public speaking. I was not ready for that! I almost ran back to my other job. You see not only did I have to speak in public but I had to talk about Sex! There were two of us and researched our topic thoroughly and we delivered a good speech while shaking behind the lectern. The parents were grateful though and encouraged us to keep going. That is where we learned one…